My Dear Friend,

In the degree program section of its University Catalogue, Family Law University (FLU) offers the following advice for all married students:

"If you have begun focusing on your spouses' faults and forgotten their strengths . . .

"If criticisms given now far outnumber compliments spoken ...

"If you regularly vent full-blown fury over minor statements or incidents, and always justify yourself for doing so ...

"If you secretly disparage your spouse to your young or adult children every chance you get ...

"If you can no longer hold back from openly arguing with your spouse even when friends, coworkers, or neighbors are visiting ...

"If you have mastered the nefarious art of ever so quietly and secretly pushing your spouse's reddest hot buttons, only to feign shock when they blow up angrily in front of you or others ...

"If you no longer allow your spouse access to your body, yet are so 'deeply hurt' when they begin flirting with others ...

"If, ignoring your spouse’s pleas for companionship, you use every chance you get to not come home in the evenings, yet 'just can't understand' why your red-hot marriage has become a blue-cold iceberg . . .

"If you never do anything your spouse enjoys doing, yet blame them for not liking everything you are interested in ...

"If all calm, engaging, substantive conversations about biblical topics, current issues, and other worthy topics have ceased ...

"If you cannot remember the last time you acknowledged you spoke or acted wrongly, genuinely asked (and gave) forgiveness, and kissed and made up ...

"If you and your spouse no longer feel comfortable sitting together quietly in the same room in the evenings ...

“Well, after considerable deliberations, several votes, and multiple rough drafts of its recommendations, Family Law University's Degree Review Board has issued the following Official Statement”:

• You now have enough earned credit hours to immediately qualify for graduation! Yes, that's right. The degree you have already fully earned is the formerly shunned but today increasingly popular D.Div. (Doctor of Divorce) degree. The expert legal minds that comprise the FLU board are fully agreed, and quite confident, that this is not only your first but also your best option.

If, however, a lowly minister such as myself, absent a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree, may presume to disagree with this board of distinguished barristers, I wish to point out that the FLU luminaries are omitting some very important facts. Here are just some:

• Those who have received their D.Div. degrees almost always regret it, no matter how loudly they deny it.

• Many earning it, while protesting "this is it," yet go on to earn the same degree multiple times, which is not only redundant but also frequently ruinous.

• When children, especially very young, are involved, they are damaged terribly, sometimes for life.

• Often the children of divorce, while vociferously listing and loathing their parents' marital failures, repeat them. Why?

• When in blind self-justification, focused only on our spouse's egregious sins, we hastily divorce and remarry without considering how our faults also contributed to the breach, those faults are sure to resurface and spoil our new union.

• Those executing even valid divorces should be aware of this sobering fact: in severing their life-partner from their personal world, they are very truly splitting their own bodily life, heart, and soul right down the middle: a part of them will simply never be the same.

• Divorce cannot change past facts. You will always be a part of your divorced spouse's life, as they will yours, and your children's.

Don't believe these dissuading facts? Just ask the nearest honest divorcee. All but the most hard-hearted will acknowledge in a heartbeat that, to this day, they are carrying with them through life ... a broken heart!

Oh, God be praised! I realize I have forgotten one more item.

The FLU Review Board, acting in its inescapable, inherent bias, has forgotten to advise all its D.Div. candidates that when the whole ugly, messy, disruptive, damaging, legal mess is finally over, your attorney will possess much more wealth and you much less. Perhaps this explains why a few decades ago American "Divorce Lawyers" quietly acquired the more euphemistic sounding designation, "Family Law Attorneys"? That's odd, isn't it? Since divorce destroys families. By the way, if memory serves me correctly, this terminology shift occurred about the time DU (Divorce University) quietly morphed into FLU.

Despite this very negative report, when all the various kinds of marital troubles are considered, it is true some spouses considering obtaining their D.Div. degree fall into the "exception" category.

Grappling with the deeply sad scenarios of being wedded to impenitent adulterers, spouses who abandon them, those addicted to drugs, husbands who refuse to support their children, spouses engaged in criminal lifestyles, those who are habitually or demonically violent - these deeply sad spouses are genuinely forced to consider, and sometimes take, the unfortunate first option offered by the FLU Board. In such cases, God mercifully mitigates, but does not altogether eliminate, the litany of negative consequences cited above. Mercy bids me say this; truth will not let me deny it.

Recognizing this, in their vaunted and multifaceted academic wisdom, the Board has decided to offer you another choice. It is this:

• If you do not wish to have the dubious honor of 'walking' with your millions of D.Div. classmates, you may - and the Board notes this next option is rarely if ever taken, usually only by soft-hearted Christians - choose to leave the program altogether. How?

• Immediately start reversing all the stupid, self-opposing, destructive attitudes and behaviors described earlier in this piece! If you do take this rare step, the Board further advises that you then re-enroll and begin taking credit courses toward a new degree. For instance, an M.BA. (Master of Blissful Affection). Or even an M.D. (Doctor of Marriage).

In closing, please do not be offended at my imperfect attempt to put a comic twist on  a subject so profoundly tragic. Humor sometimes helps make unpalatable truth digestible.

I would also add, this isn't my advice. It is food for thought carefully planned, prepared, and served to the divorce-hungry public by the learned Faculty and Board of Family Law University. And they should know.

On Behalf of the Board,

Dr. Greg Hinnant

GREG HINNANT MINISTRIES